


Tower

by Aerileah



Series: The Bracken Trails [2]
Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Genre: Fern Survived, Gen, Overprotective Big Brother, Overprotective little sister, Raksura AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26615782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aerileah/pseuds/Aerileah
Summary: Fern knew that they would either never find their people, or they would find them by unexpected happenstance, and it wasn't worth agonizing over which of the two it would be. Then, the unexpected happenstance finally happened.
Series: The Bracken Trails [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913620
Comments: 5
Kudos: 34





	1. The Poison

**Author's Note:**

> New post schedule: updates on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Fern didn’t so much wake up as slowly float her way up from darkness and into a place that was too bright and too painful. The first thing she noticed was that her head hurt. The second was that all of her body hurt. _Never letting Leaf wrestle like that again_ , she thought sluggishly. Then, _Wait, Leaf is dead_. And her eyes snapped open. She was on her side, slumped in an odd position that didn’t feel natural. Sparks of pain traced up and down her spine, spiking through her arms and legs unexpectedly. “Moon?” she gasped. She was in a tent, but she didn’t think it was her tent. She didn’t remember going inside. She didn’t remember falling asleep. 

"Moon?” _I’m sick_ , she realized. She hated being sick. She heard voices then, outside the tent. She thought she heard the chief hunter, and some of the elders, and then Moon’s voice, rough and furious, cut through them all. She tried to sit up, and gasped in pain as streaks of light flashed behind her eyes. The flap to the tent was pushed open, and the blast of sunlight on her face made her cringe away and try to cover her eyes. She felt someone grab her wrists, roughly haul her to her feet and pull her up. The person abruptly released her and her knees collapsed under her.

She smelled fear, and tried to shift. Nothing happened. Horrified, she opened her eyes. She saw the blurry form of Moon leaning over her. She heard him snarl and hiss at the others as he grabbed her and pulled her toward him. “I think I’m sick,” she said into Moon’s neck. “I can’t shift,” she whispered as quietly as she could, even though she spoke in their language. 

“You’re not sick. They poisoned us,” he said.

Fern’s eyes snapped open, and she turned to look at the Cordans. She had to squint to focus.

Dargan, the headman, stepped forward. “The girl saw you both. You’re Fell. Demons.” Moon stiffened. 

“We aren’t,” Fern said. Ilane must have followed them, must have thought they were going for a midnight tryst. What a ridiculous thought. What a damning excursion.

“We don’t know what we are,” Moon said.

“The poison only works on Fell!" someone said, but Fern wasn't sure who.

“Well it works on more than them,” Fern snapped, immediately regretting how loud her voice was. She turned to bury her face into Moon’s neck again. He smelled like illness, fear, and stale sweat. Distantly, she heard Selis’ voice, and Moon answering her. Distantly, she heard the sound of a fist connecting with flesh. A fight? Moon tightened his grip on her. Distantly, she felt the Cordans grab her from Moon and heard him snarl in thwarted fury. Then she distanced herself from it all and sank back into darkness. 

***

This time when Fern woke it was instantaneous. Moon was leaning over her, reaching out to touch her face. _Oh, that hurts,_ she thought, reaching to grab her aching head. A weight and a strange noise followed the movement of her arms. It was a shackle, attached to a chain. She looked up at Moon, bewildered. 

“I know,” he snorted. “We didn’t have enough big pots to go around and they wasted metal on chains.” He was breathing hard, his face looking oddly lined and pinched. In fact, his face _was_ oddly lined. 

"Moon, you’re--” 

"I know,” he interrupted. “We both have it.” He held out his arm and she saw it, a fine tracery of scales, a ghost pattern under the skin. He had a shackle around his right arm. She looked at her left arm, and the shackle around her wrist. The metal was bent terribly out of shape to fit on her narrow arm, and she could see a faint pattern all along her skin. 

Fern slowly sat up, the packed dirt of the clearing gritty on her palms. The strange scale pattern was stark on the backs of her hands. She looked again and saw it wasn’t a strange scale pattern. Those were _her_ scales. She ran her hands through her hair, feeling for spines and frills, but all she felt was hair. Her hair tie was gone. So were the pretty stones and pieces of rounded glass she’d put in her pocket the night before. She looked down the open front of her smock. The scale pattern was everywhere. She shivered.

The sun beat down on them both in the open clearing. The shadows beneath the jungle plume trees seemed very far away. Belatedly, she realized that Moon was digging around a spike driven into the ground, his fingers raw and bleeding as he scrabbled at the packed dirt and rocks. The spike was driven through a link of a large chain, and Fern realized the chain connected both her and Moon to this small scrap of land. 

She shuffled over and started to dig with him. “I don’t understand,” she said. 

“They want to watch a giant vargit rip us apart,” Moon snarled. “I’m going to rip _them_ apart,” he added. 

“Moon, look at me,” Fern snapped.

“We don’t have time. I can’t _shift_.” Moon growled. 

Fern stopped her digging to grab Moon’s chin and turn his face to her. “Look at me!” 

Moon stopped and met her eyes, his breathing harsh and uneven.

Fern leaned forward and Moon dipped his face down to touch his forehead to hers. “We’ll get through this,” Fern said.

“Together,” Moon promised, his breathing slightly calmer. 

They went back to digging, and managed to pull up a few fist sized rocks. Moon leaned his weight against the stake, trying to pull it from the hard-packed ground. Fern suggested he take a rock and pound at one of the weaker-looking links. Although the chain wasn’t well made, it did not yield. Fern and Moon were coated equally with dust and sweat when the jungle around them grew quickly, and eerily, quiet. 

A giant vargit walked from the undergrowth. A giant, giant vargit. Fern didn’t think she’d ever seen one this big before, or hadn’t seen one this big up close. Dark green feathers, not unlike the color of Fern’s scales, shaded to brown on its belly. It was a good twelve paces high, and those were Moon’s paces, not hers. Its long, sharp beak had some blood stains, and its vestigial wings angled not to fly, but to reach forward and pull prey into its beak.

Moon shoved Fern behind him, and grabbed a rock. He hefted it in his hand, and waited for the vargit to get closer to them. Fern thought that even with how big it was, he would have had no problem taking it from the air in his winged form. Fern tried to shift, but nothing happened. 

The chain was too short for them to stand, and Moon rose up on his knees as far the chain would allow. Like this, all they could do was make the vargit work for its meal. Moon hefted the rock. Fern nearly cheered when it bounced off the vargit’s head. It stepped back with a piercing cry, but shook its head and stepped forward again. It was clear Moon had only angered it. Fern slapped a second rock into Moon's outstretched hand.

Fern felt the air pressure change, felt something in the sky above them. She looked up, and she saw wings. Huge wings, a shadow from above, coming down on her and Moon. She lunged for him, grabbing his shoulders from behind, trying to pull him down. Then the big, dark shape struck the ground. It was the creature from the sky-island.

The rush of air threw the vargit sideways, and knocked Moon and Fern down together. Fern screamed in angry defiance and managed to get between Moon and the creature. It was huge, even bigger than she’d thought. It was easily three times Moon’s shifted size. She got the impression of vines or tentacles on its head as it stood upright and grabbed the vargit with one giant hand. The other hand reached out to Fern and Moon, and she hissed and swiped at its claws with her ineffective softskin nails. It nudged her aside and, almost gingerly, pulled the stake from the ground. Moon lunged up from the ground, grabbed Fern around the waist, and started to run. 

In a blur over Moon's shoulder, she saw the creature throw the vargit at the jungle, and the frightened screams from the undergrowth told her it had landed close to the Cordans. She hoped the vargit ripped them to shreds. Then a heavy weight slapped her and Moon flat on the ground, knocking the air from her lungs. Moon struggled, twisting, as a new pressure surrounded them. The creature from the sky-island was grabbing hold of them. Fern shrieked in panic and pounded her fists against the claws. Then the creature snatched them off the ground and up. Fern wrenched desperately, her bloodied fingertips throbbing. _Please don’t eat us please don’t eat us._

The creature tucked them close to its chest. Fern felt it gather itself and, knowing the feeling after years and years of flying with Moon, she instinctively prepared herself for the leap that would take them into the air. The creature flapped its great wings and left the ground behind. Moon yelped in startled reflex, scrambling to hold onto something. Fern gripped him tightly, and they held onto one another as the creature took them into the sky. 

It had been a long time since Moon had been carried in flight, and Fern could feel him shuddering. Fern couldn’t see where they were going, but the air got progressively colder and she was grateful for Moon’s body heat, as well as the body heat from the creature. She felt Moon craning his head around to watch everything, but kept her head tucked under his chin. She waited and waited for the creature to drop them - she’d had plenty of nightmares about that, especially after her mother and wingless brothers had died. But the creature kept flying. 

She felt the change in angle when the creature was preparing to land, and tapped twice with the fingers of one hand where it rested on Moon’s shoulder. Moon tapped back. They braced themselves for the landing. 


	2. The Shifter

It was hard for Fern to tell where they landed, but it was very cold and felt very high up. She thought it was either a mountaintop or another sky-island. She heard the creature's claws scrape on stone, and then it released Moon and Fern onto dirty brickwork. In a tangle already, and their legs shaking too much to hold their weight, they collapsed in a jumbled heap. Fern was dizzy from the poison and the flight and the cold, but Moon was alert enough to shove her behind him and hiss defiantly. 

Fern looked up and up at the creature, but it was still hard to focus on. She shook her head in frustration and readied herself for a fight. Then the creature shrunk, its form obscured by something like smoke or mist, and a man stood in its place. Fern felt her mouth drop open. In horror, surprise, or joy, she wasn’t exactly sure what. 

The man was tall and lean, his build more like Moon’s than like the Cordans or most other softskins she was used to. He was gray all over, not just his clothing, but also his skin, hair, and one of his eyes. The gray eye looked clouded over, like it had been injured, but his other eye was a brilliant blue. His features were firm and angular. His clothes looked sturdy, if a bit weathered. 

Moon snarled, then lunged up to try and stand. The chain rattled, and Moon slumped back to his knees again. The man made eye contact with Fern, tilting his head to the side slightly. She couldn't interpret his expression. In the space of a breath, he shifted and leapt into the air, soaring out and down away from sight. Moon swore, turning to Fern and anxiously patting her arms, shoulders, and her sides. “Fern? Fern!” He pressed his forehead to hers. 

“I’m fine,” Fern said a bit breathlessly. 

“We need to get out of here,” Moon said, lurching to his feet again and pulling Fern with him. Fern kept her eyes on the sky, hoping the spectacular shift and dive meant the man was going to come back, and not that he’d left them here to die from exposure. Exasperated with her immobility, Moon picked Fern up and carried her several steps to a crenelation. She looked down and down, and realized they were on a stone tower set on the edge of a deep ravine. “If only we had our claws,” Moon huffed, his voice a dry croak. 

“If we had our claws, you would have your wings,” Fern pointed out. 

Moon made an affirming noise deep in his throat and leaned over the edge of the battlement. Fern tapped his cheek, and he gently set her down. 

“Don’t fall," said an unfamiliar voice 

Moon whipped around to face the man, his body stiff with rage. Fern’s heart rose in her chest. The man - the shifter - was speaking their language, the language their mother taught them. It had been so so long since she'd felt hope.

“You think that’s funny,” Moon croaked. 

“Moon,” Fern breathed, putting her hand on his arm. 

Moon looked down at her, and then back at the man. His eyes widened in realization. 

The man held out a bright blue waterskin. Fern wondered what kind of animal had skin that color, or if the maker had dyed it that brilliant shade. Moon raised his arm to tuck Fern more firmly behind him. “That’s how we got into this,” he said. 

“Moon,” Fern said, a little more insistently. She pushed Moon's arm so she could look at the man from under his armpit. 

The man lifted gray eyebrows. “It’s just water,” he said, shrugging. He took a sip. Fern’s throat burned. 

“What do you want?” Fern asked, raising her voice to be heard over the wind. She realized just after she said it that Moon had asked the exact same thing, his tone of voice completely different from hers. 

“Fern,” he said warningly. She gripped his forearm firmly. 

“Just trying to help,” the man said, cocking a meaningful look toward Fern. She was wavering on her feet, and shivering. 

“You tried to kill us on the sky-island,” Moon challenged. 

“I tried to catch you,” the man replied. “I just wanted a closer look.” His gaze drifted back to Fern, then to Moon again. Fern wondered how old he was. Something about him told her he was old, much older than his softskinned form looked. He had a heavy leather belt, also gray, with a pouch and knife on his waist. He was barefoot, like Moon and Fern. “I’m Stone, of the Indigo Cloud Court,” he said with an air of expectation. 

“What do you want with us?” Moon asked again. “You going to kill us or just leave us up here?”

“I thought neither,” Stone said, then turned away, walking across the roof toward a pack and bound stack of firewood. Fern stepped around Moon to follow him. Moon caught her and lifted her up. 

“Moon,” she huffed. “Put. Me. Down.” They had run into shifters before, and it never went well. But Fern’s heart was beating loud in her chest, and not in fear. Not any more. 

“We don’t know what he wants,” Moon insisted. 

“I know he’s going over there to build a fire. I’m cold. And I want to ask him questions as much as you do. Can’t we just sit and talk? And get warm? Please?” Fern reached up and tapped his cheek twice with her fingertips. He sighed, and set her down. 

The man - Stone - crouched on the flagstones watching them. Even his name was in their language, Fern thought, just like hers and Moon’s. It had always bothered her that no matter where they went, their names were meaningless noises, when she and Moon knew they meant something, and that the names meant something to their parents. They walked across the tower, the chain clattering between them annoyingly. 

“What did they give you?” Stone asked. 

“A poison,” Fern replied.

“They said it only works on Fell,” Moon added. “We aren’t Fell.” 

Stone’s eyebrows quirked, glancing at Moon and settling on Fern. “I noticed.” He was breaking up wood to lay the fire. “Poison for Fell? I’ve never heard of that before.” 

“Neither had we,” Fern chirped, settling on her knees and leaning forward to assist with stacking the wood. She felt Moon tense next to her, but he didn’t leap in to pull her away from the scary dangerous man, so she considered it a victory, even if only a small one. Moon settled next to her, the chain pooling on the flagstones between them. She gave him a reassuring smile while Stone dug in his pack, presumably for flint. Moon made a sour face and held the back of his still scale-bedecked hand up to her. She gave him an admonishing look. 

Moon was right that Stone might be keeping them there to wait for the poison to leave their system so he could eat them. Fern didn’t think so. She thought that if he was just looking for a snack he would have snatched the vargit and flown away. 

"I'm Fern, and this is Moon," Fern said by way of introduction. 

The man paused briefly in his rummaging, then pulled flint and a small piece of steel from his pack. Fern was relieved. She didn't think Moon would take well to Stone pulling his knife to start the fire. “Why did they stake you out?" Stone asked. "Catch you two stealing their cattle?” He lit the fire with his flint and slowly fed it smaller bits of wood. 

“We were living with them. They found out what we are,” Fern said. “Can I have that waterskin? I’m parched.” 

Stone flicked a glance at her. She thought there was some amusement in his good eye, and handed her the skin. She took a careful sip to wet her mouth, then several gulps. She passed the skin to Moon, who coughed, then took a few more careful sips. 

“What are you?” Moon asked as he capped and set the waterskin closer to Stone.

Fern turned to him, horrified. She’d been hoping to work up to that question. 

Stone looked at them, his eyebrows furrowed. “Did you get hit on the head?” Moon and Fern were silent, and Stone’s gaze turned thoughtful. “I’m a Raksura. Same as you.” 

“We’re--” Moon said. Fern reached out and gripped his wrist. Her heart was pounding so loud in her ears she wasn’t sure if he stopped talking or if she just didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. _Raksura. We’re Raksura._

Stone started to speak again, and Fern’s ears belatedly caught up. “--your colony?”

Moon stilled, and Fern could practically see the wheels in his mind turning. He was probably trying to decide between lies to protect them or other, slightly different, lies even less likely to protect them.

"What’s a colony?” she asked. 

Stone’s face somehow turned even more incredulous, then in a moment, the expression vanished and he was impossible to read. “Where are you from? How long have you two been… alone?” 

“It was just our mother and our--" Moon paused, and used the Altanic word, "--siblings. They died. A long time ago,”

Fern raised her eyebrows at him and he ignored her. "We think it was about thirty five turns ago. Children don't keep time very well," Fern added helpfully.

Stone winced, his attention returning to the fire. “This happened somewhere east? Around the curve of the gulf of the Abascene? 

“Further than that,” Moon admitted. 

“There were a few courts that went that far east,” Stone said. “I thought they all failed and returned to the Reaches.” Fern leaned closer to the fire, rubbing her hands over it. The shackle on her wrist was getting pleasantly warm. 

“You both the same age, then?” Stone somehow managed to make the question nonchalant, though Fern could tell it was important to him. He dug in his pack again, pulling out a kettle and two cups. The kettle was worn, with burn marks across the base, but beautifully worked. The lighter metal higher up near the lid had some intricate detailing, worked with shapes and flowing figures. He filled it with water from the waterskin, then set it in the coals of the fire. Fern leaned in to get a closer look, ostensibly leaning closer to the warmth of the fire. _Were those figures Raksura? Were those flowing shapes writing?_

“I’m not a child,” Fern said absent-mindedly. "We're the same age." She was used to being mistaken for one, given her slight frame, especially when compared to Moon’s.

Stone admitted, “I thought you were a child at first, but you both are matured, even if only recently.” 

“We stopped having to get Moon new clothes all the time about five turns ago,” Fern said. Moon huffed out a quiet breath. Her attention was caught by the beautiful matched cups to the tea kettle. Fern hesitantly reached out for one of the cups. She wanted to see it more closely. Stone handed it to her without hesitation, and she sat back to admire the shapes hammered into the surface. 

“So this woman who called herself your mother. She was the reigning queen?” Stone asked.

Fern and Moon looked at one another. 

“No,” Moon said, drawing out the sound.

“We lived in a tree,” Fern added, unsure of what else to say. 

“What did she look like?” Stone asked. He sounded exasperated. 

Moon bristled. Fern looked up again from the beautiful cup, her eyes narrowing. This man had no reason to be exasperated with _them_. They hadn't tried to 'catch' him the night before!

Stone tried a different tactic. "The others, your clutchmates, there were three of them? The same age as you?"

Fern and Moon gritted their teeth in unison.

"It was a guess," Stone said. "Clutches are born in groups of five."

Fern let out her breath. “Fine then, it’s your turn,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s your turn to answer the questions and our turn to ask,” Fern announced, setting the cup down deliberately. Moon pinched his nose between two fingers. “Stop that, Moon,” she said. “He’s been asking pretty much all the questions so far." Moon waved his hand in acquiescence. 

Stone had the audacity to chuckle. 

“What?” Fern asked.

“You have enough personality in that tiny body for ten Arbora,” Stone said. His voice was warm. It make her flush.

"What’s an Arbora?” she asked.

Stone blinked. Then he reached into his pack, pulled out a leather packet, opened it, and scraped off a portion of the contents into the water in the kettle. The heady scent of good, strong tea rose into the air. Stone replaced the lid on the kettle. The packet was a tea cake, Fern realized.

"Raksura without wings are called Arbora," Stone said. "The females and males are fertile. They can give birth to both Arbora and warriors.” He shook his head, admitting, “I don’t know exactly how that works. A mentor explained it to me, but that was turns ago and it’s complicated. Arbora are divided into soldiers, hunters, and teachers. There’s also mentors, but you have to be born with a special ability for that. They take care of colony, raise the children, hunt for food, guard the ground.” He shrugged. “They run the place.” Stone looked up, and deliberately met Moon’s eyes. “We’re Aeriat. We protect the colony.” 

Moon snorted, and Fern smacked him gently on the knee. She’d forgotten about the shackle and chain, which clattered annoyingly. He rolled his eyes at her. Fern thought hard for a moment. If Arbora gave birth to Arbora and Aeriat, then their mother, who had wings…

“Can Aeriat give birth?” Fern asked. 

“Only royal Aeriat,” Stone said. “Queens mate with consorts. Queens give birth to warriors and more royal Aeriat. Warriors are infertile.” 

Fern had a cold, sick feeling in her stomach. "And all warriors have wings."

Stone nodded as he served the tea into the two mugs, and held one out to Fern. 

Fern reached for the cup, but Moon pulled her hand back. “What?” Stone said. “It’s tea. You watched me make it.” 

“Moon,” Fern said. “Stop it. I want the tea.” Moon released her wrist with a huff. 

She and Stone sipped on the tea while Moon glowered. It was good tea, strong and bracing, with an aftertaste of citrus. Fern sipped and sipped, hoping it would ease the knot in her gut. Finally, Moon erupted, “You’re just waiting for the poison to wear off. If you eat us while it's still in us, you won’t be able to shift either.”

Stone’s face darkened abruptly. He leaned away from the fire, frustration - or perhaps fury - obvious in the lines of his lean form. Fern held her cup out. “More tea, please?” she said sweetly. She turned to Moon. “You feel better now that you have that out?”

Moon crossed his arms over his chest, or at least did his best with the chain and manacle. “No,” he muttered.

Stone refilled her tea cup, and Fern could feel his deep chuckle reverberate through the flagstones. Then he levered himself up. “From what I can tell, you both are skin and bones. I'm going hunting for something that'll actually taste good - any requests?”

“No, thank you, Fern said, before Moon could say anything rude. While the tea had settled her stomach some, she didn’t think she would be up to eating anything with substance. She had a suspicion Moon felt the same way, or at least he wouldn't accept any food he hadn't hunted himself.


	3. The Offer

After Stone shifted and flew off the tower, Fern tried to collect her thoughts. Moon reached for Stone’s pack. 

“Moon!” she scolded. 

“What?” Moon said. “He must know we’re going to look through it while he’s gone. He could have taken it with him.” He pulled out some empty waterskins, packets of food - and not even staples, just dried fruits and nuts that would be useful for flavoring and snacks. A few more pressed tea cakes, and a leather-wrapped parcel. Moon unrolled the leather and Fern gasped in amazement. It was a heavy bracelet of red gold, with fluid interlocking designs all around. It was even more beautiful than the kettle, clearly a piece made for display rather than function. 

Moon grunted as he put the items back in the pack. One other thing caught Fern’s eye. “Is that a blanket?” she asked, and pulled it out. “Oh, so it is.”

Fern draped it across her and Moon’s laps. He glowered at her. “Don’t get comfortable. I want to look at that trap door and see if there’s a way to get down from here.” 

“Do you believe what he’s saying? About Arbora and Aeriat?” Fern asked. 

Moon shrugged. “It’s not like we know enough to catch him in a lie.” He was still looking at the trap door. 

Fern wrung her hands, picking at the blood encrusted under her nails. “Sorrow couldn’t have been our mother,” she said miserably. 

Sorrow was their mother’s name. 

Moon turned back to her, his head cocked to the side. His confusion was palpable. “Why not?” 

“Arbora give birth to Arbora and warriors. Even if Sorrow was a queen, which we won’t know without more information from Stone, which of course we can’t verify unless there’s someone else we could ask…”

“Fern,” Moon said, reaching to catch her hands. “I don’t understand.” 

“Sorrow couldn’t have given birth to both me and you,” Fern said in a rush. She felt like she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs to say all the thoughts in her head. “She had wings. I don't. Winged Raksura don’t give birth to Arbora. With what Stone’s said, we can’t be brother and sister. We don’t even know if Sorrow was a queen or a warrior. She might not even be  _ your  _ mother.” 

Moon squeezed her hands firmly. “You are my sister. You will always be my sister. Nothing will ever change that.” Fern sucked in a deep breath, and Moon touched his forehead to hers. “Together,” he promised softly. 

Fern closed her eyes. “Together,” she promised back

***

Moon ended up picking her up to explore the trap door. Fern protested vehemently, but he wrapped her up in the blanket and carried her over bodily, the chain swinging with each step. The shaft below the trap door was filled with rocks and mortar, as if intentionally blocked from below. Fern felt Moon shudder in horror at the sight, and they returned to the fire. 

The woosh of air from above warned them of Stone’s return, and although Moon looked ready to grab Fern and leap off the edge of the tower, he held still. Stone shifted to his groundling form and gestured to a large cut of meat on the flagstone as if in invitation. The meat looked rich and oily, with a thick layer of blubber. It made Fern feel sick to her stomach and she shook her head. She tried to make it polite.

She felt overwhelmed with questions, not sure which she should ask next, or if she should ask at all. “Fern?” Moon said. He pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. Stone looked meaningfully at the blanket wrapped around her, and Moon shrugged. 

“So what do you want with us?” Moon asked again. 

Stone paced to the fire, frowning down at it. “I’ve been looking for warriors to join us. Our last generation… didn’t produce enough. I’ve been at a colony to the east, the Star Aster Court. But I couldn’t talk any of them into coming with me.” He glanced up. “You two have anywhere else you want to go?” 

Fern couldn’t get enough air. She gasped and hiccuped and Moon turned her in his lap and held her face between his hands and told her to breathe. She buried her face in his chest and breathed and breathed and tried to stop her racing thoughts. 

She didn't know what to think.

***

Fern woke slowly, the familiar scent of her brother surrounding her. She couldn’t share a pallet with Moon with the Cordans, but she always felt safer if she could wake up warm with him close by. She was on her side, Moon curled around behind her, his head, and hers, pillowed on his outstretched arm. The blanket was draped over both of them, though Moon’s feet were exposed. 

Stone said he didn’t want to continue talking until Fern and Moon were less crazy, and Fern had to admit she’d been a bit hysterical. Moon had been a bit hysterical, too. It had been a rough day. 

She felt Moon begin to stir behind her, felt him start to roll onto his back. His body stiffened, probably as he opened his eyes. They had slept under the outstretched arch of Stone’s wing there on the roof of the tower. It had reminded her of a tent, before she’d fully awoken. The dark, scaly membrane looked so much like Moon’s, except for the number of scars, old healed-over rents where the scales had torn. The front edge of the wing was sharp, but the joints were gnarled. 

Moon turned his head to look into her eyes. She nodded, and they closed their eyes and shifted together. She felt a pressure in her chest, then she felt the shift push through her body. Moon curled in on himself, his breath rushing out in a swell of relief. Fern realized then just how anxious he had been, that he had worried he’d lost the ability to get his wings. She had known the poison would wear off and they’d be able to shift again, somewhere deep in her bones, and she’d assumed that Moon had felt the same. She flushed with shame. Moon tapped her cheek twice, interrupting her thoughts, and she looked at him. He twitched a few spines in inquiry, and she flicked a spine in agreement. Fern carefully folded the blanket and set it aside. They quietly and slowly shimmied out from under Stone’s wing. 

Stone’s breathing hadn’t changed at all - either he was deeply asleep, or good at pretending to be deeply asleep. He must be very old and strong indeed, Fern thought, to be able to have a restful sleep in his shifted form. Fern and Moon had slept a few times in their shifted forms, but only because they’d had little or no choice. Moon gathered the dangling bit of chain and they walked to the edge of the tower. Moon put a claw under the manacle on Fern’s wrist and gently pried at it until it snapped away. Then he did the same to the manacle on his wrist. 

Fern shook out her spines and frills, rolling her shoulders, then stepped into the circle of his arms, and they dove off the tower together. Moon flew up and down the gorge, dipping in and out of the wind currents, turning spins and warming them both in the heat of the sun. He rode the air currents down to the river, and released Fern just above the water in a calm spot where the channel was wide and deep. She giggled as she tumbled in, the feeling a stark contrast to the desperate plunge to escape Stone the night before. 

Moon circled up and back around, plunging into the water near her, and they swam for a bit. Moon was a faster swimmer than Fern, but she could get into smaller, tighter spaces than he. She found a rocky area and dug around for freshwater crabs, snapping them in half and tossing them onto the beach when she found them. Moon found a school of slow-moving fish, each about three paces long. He caught two and threw them up on the beach, where they flopped and gasped for air. Fern waded up out of the water, pierced both fish behind their eyes with her claws, and neatly gutted them. She ate one immediately, tossing the entrails downstream of where Moon was fishing, then turned to the crabs. She cleaned the crabs out in the shallows, arranged the meat on the biggest shell, and carried the collection back up the beach. 

Moon had polished off three fish, standing waist deep in the water, by the time she waded out of the water. Fern ate her second fish, picking through the tender meat of the crabs as she nibbled. She wished they had a nice loaf of bread to soak up the juices pooling on the bottom of her shell plate. They hadn’t had good bread since the Karthas forge, where Moon had gotten a pair of knives and some pretty ear baubles for Fern. Moon polished off three more fish, slapping them against a rock near the shore to kill them, and eating them slower than his first three. Feeling a sudden wave of sadness, she watched as Moon scrubbed his scales clean with sand from the riverbottom, rubbing his claws and wrists particularly hard. His knives, her jewelry, as well as their woven blankets and Moon’s other weapons were still back at the Cordans' camp. Watching Moon scrub himself down, she knew more than just their things had been lost. 

The base of her neck tingled, as though her frills could feel something, and she spun to see Stone sitting on a large flat rock downwind from them both. How had he gotten there so silently? He was sitting with his arms propped behind him, face tipped up to the sun. Fern went into the river to scrub her claws clean.

Still sunning himself, Stone said, “You’re not supposed to do that, you know. Raksura don’t.” 

“Raksura don’t bathe?” Moon asked, deliberately misunderstanding. “That’s going to be a problem.” He shook his wings, scattering water on the bank, and on Fern. 

“Hey!” Fern said, splashing him back with her tail. 

Stone leveled a look at them. “Yes Raksura bathe. We don’t fish. Not like that.” 

Fern and Moon waded out of the river and sat a bit away from Stone. Moon kept his wings unfurled to dry in the sun. If they shifted too soon, the water would transfer to their clothes. 

“Why don’t you fish?” Moon asked.

“I don’t know. Probably never a good place for it,” Stone said.

“So it’s less of a Raksura thing and more of an environment thing,” Fern observed. Stone rolled his eye at her. “What?” she said, affronted. “Don’t call us out an un-Raksuran if you don’t know why something is the way it is.” She frowned, her spines flattening against her skull self-consciously. "Are we un-Raksuran?"

Stone's face was implacable again. He sighed, but she couldn't tell his meaning. “So," he said. "I’ve got one other court to visit before I head home. Are you two coming with me?” 

Fern and Moon shared a look. “If you were looking for Raksura, why did you come to the valley?” Moon asked. 

Stone didn’t seem surprised by their suspicion. “I was on my way back. I stopped to rest, caught a scent of something that ended up being you. It was faint because you were in groundling form.” He shrugged. “Thought I’d stay a few days to look around, see if there was a small colony here I didn’t know about.” 

“And you couldn’t have just said ‘hello’ to us on the sky-island? You had to scare us half to death?” Fern demanded. 

Stone shrugged. “You would have reacted the same no matter how I approached you.” 

Fern grunted. Moon let out his breath, frustrated. Fern grabbed Moon’s wrist. “Just. Give us a moment,” she said, grabbing Moon’s collar flange. 

He jumped them both into the sky, shooting up and up, flapping hard, until they reached a comfortable height. He turned a slow spiral, soaring leisurely back downward so they could talk in private. 

“Agreeing to go with him isn’t a commitment to stay in his colony,” Fern said into Moon’s ear.

“I know,” he said, “It’s just… it’s a lot.”

Fern took a deep breath. “If we let this chance go by, we’ll regret it. The unexpected happenstance finally happened.” 

“And what if…” Moon started to say.

Fern tapped his cheek twice to interrupt his thought. “If they end up being evil, we’ll set the place on fire and fly away.” 

Moon groaned deep in his chest, then, despite himself, he laughed. He turned the slow spiral into a steeper dive, and landed them on the riverbank close to Stone.

“We’ll come with you,” Fern called out. 

Stone's face was implacable, but he nodded and said, “Good.” 


End file.
